


The Importance of a Good Night's Sleep

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just two heads of state, each helping ensure the other gets a good night's sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance of a Good Night's Sleep

  
She didn’t have much time for idle speculation, these days, but an agile mind creates its own opportunities. Insomnia was one such opportunity, Laura had found. Lying awake even though she knew she needed the sleep desperately – the rest, and the escape – she would let her thoughts race where they might. Long experience taught her that getting up, reading a book, doing almost anything to take her mind off  _trying_  to sleep, was actually more likely to lead to drowsiness. At the moment, however, she was loath to move, and her mind took off, free from external distractions.   
  
Enough of self-preservation remained to help her steer clear of anything too anxiety-inducing, like thinking about the current proximity of the Cylons, or Thrace’s return, or the seemingly insurmountable practical aspects of the journey to Earth. She had already skimmed through her perspective on Bill Adama’s rocky relationship with his son, which was always interesting to analyze from the viewpoint of the amateur psychologist (and what good teacher  _wasn’t_  an amateur psychologist?). From there, her thoughts had leapt by various intermediate topics to the continuing issue of rations, the distribution of provisions… she knew that the middle of the night was hardly the time to come up with any useful solutions, but couldn’t help going over and over the facts and factors, trying to tie pieces of information together in some new way that would suddenly make their slender resources stretch adequately across the fleet, making everybody happy for once.   
  
This inevitably led to concerns regarding prioritizing, deciding  _who_  got  _what_ , and  _when,_  and from there she automatically thought of the prisoners on the Astral Queen, and it was just one short hop – one stepping-stone to the side in her stream of consciousness – to thinking about Zarek.   
  
The Vice President. He had so recently (or was it so long ago? Hard to tell, anymore) been one of those prisoners. But never a  _common_ , never a  _petty_  criminal, no. Different. Superior. Oddly comfortable in his own skin, she noted. He wore the orange prison coverall with the same easy authority that he later conveyed in a suit and tie; he never quite blended into the crowd. Strange, in a way, that his latest role as the civilian second-in-command of the human race should have something of a humbling effect on him. He probably had more actual power now than at any time in his life – Laura discounted his short stint as President, because Adama had held all the real power then and both she and Zarek had known it – but he wore it with less distinction than she’d ever seen in him. He had seemed, before, like a revolutionary, a leader of men, a charismatic icon; now, he just seemed like a weary middle-aged bureaucrat most of the time. Tory often had a stronger air of authority, frankly.   
  
Well, of course, she  _would_ , Laura mused.   
  
Things had changed. Laura thought it, and then had to suppress a laugh at how monumental an understatement it was.  _Things had changed,_ indeed. Caprica was a radioactive wasteland, she was President (again), she had cancer (again), the Cylons most likely outnumbered the humans now, and they were all traveling together in a cluster of uneasy alliance toward whatever surprises Earth held in store, and Tom Zarek had been brought to heel by being made Vice President… how much chamalla had she put in her tea, anyway? Because she  _must_  be hallucinating.   
  
Laura tried to stifle her impulse, drove her mind firmly away from thoughts of the absurdity, the sheer surrealism, of every aspect of her life. Of everyone’s life, these topsy-turvy days. None of it made any sense, anyway, and dwelling on it could drive even the sanest person crazy. Assuming, of course, there were even any sane people left, which was debatable. Let the Oracles and the Cylons mire themselves in the meaning, the  _why_  of it all; she would rather keep her own mind on the administration, the  _how_. Except, of course, that being neck-deep in prophesy half the time did not always allow her that luxury.   
  
A rustling shift of the sheets behind her drew her attention, and she half-turned to see that she was not the only one awake. Zarek smirked at her, but then brushed a stray lock of hair back from her temple with unexpected tenderness.   
  
“You should be sleeping,” he admonished with a shamelessly broad yawn.   
  
“You shouldn’t be here at all,” she shot back, not ungently, frowning as she struggled not to catch his yawn herself. “If you stay all night, word  _will_  get out. But if you’re going to be staying, _you_  should be sleeping, too.”   
  
“ _So there_. You sure told me.”   
  
She chuckled despite herself, which was the way she approached most of her reactions to Zarek – she had them despite her best intentions. And certainly despite common sense. Common sense was very far removed from the scenario, and distanced itself still further when Zarek snuck one hand under the sheets and curved it around her waist to pull her closer. She recognized the thrill, now, the same as it had been since their first pseudo-embrace in that long-ago receiving line on Cloud Nine… recognizing it, anticipating it, didn’t lessen its impact. Over the years, it had simply worn down her resistance. She wondered if he even knew how long she’d been interested before she finally succumbed.   
  
But then she met his eyes, the wonder and hunger in them, and suspected he knew exactly how long, knew exactly what she was feeling. His eyes were clearly a mirror of her own in this, after all.   
  
She felt her way up his arm, fingers dipping in and out of the hollow under his tricep, moving along to wrap around his shoulder and lean in further, encouraging his exploration.   
  
“Aren’t you going to ask what I was thinking about?” Laura asked, more to fill the silence than because she actually wanted his response.   
  
“You were thinking about me, right?” he whispered along her neck. “But I don’t think I want to know the details. Probably something we shouldn’t examine too closely…” He knew the area between her collarbone and ear intimately, knew how to play that field of skin like an instrument to induce the response he wanted. It had been his very first line of attack, when he first made his move on New Caprica during the resistance, to come along behind her during a meeting, look at a map over her shoulder, and pretend innocence while he reduced her to a puddle of trembling need with only his breath and the lightest seemingly incidental brush of an unshaved cheek. “You probably weren’t thinking about  _this_ ,” he added smugly, tongue tracing the crease behind her earlobe, “or you would’ve tried to wake me up.”  
  
 _Self-centered bastard,_ she thought, but all that came out was, “ _Tom_ ,” a gasp and a shiver.   
  
She didn’t find him powerful in his Vice Presidential coat and tie, but it didn’t matter.  _Here_ , he wore his authority with the same confidence he’d always had.  _Here,_  although she hated to admit it, he was her equal at the very least, and not least because he could do…  _that_ … with his mouth, with his hand. Laura cried out again, softly, more a whimper than anything else, and let Tom do the thing he did best, which was to drive all the thoughts straight out of her head, replacing them with himself. He could never conquer her, but he could certainly occupy her, and as he proceeded to do so her last fleeting coherent notion was that, if nothing else, she would sleep quite soundly and happily afterward. Which – although the press corps would probably think otherwise were they ever to discover the true nature of the relationship between the President and Vice President – was more than reason enough to continue.   
  
You just couldn’t put too high a price on a good night’s sleep, after all.


End file.
